Did you know that on average only 20% of the tasks on your marketing to do lists are money-making activities? The other 80%? Busy work that is wasting your time. So how do you stop wasting time on busy work and get to the money-making activities that are going to change your life, giving you more of the financial freedom you're seeking?
That's what I'm going to help you out with now. Let's start by getting clear on what busy work and money-making activities are.
What is the difference between money-making activities and busy work so that you can stop wasting time on busy work?
Busy work is any task that doesn't earn money (or clients) and is not critical to the growth of either you or your business. These tasks leach your time, keeping you busy, making you think you've accomplished something because you get to cross done things off your list.
Busy work is often the reason you're working long hours, feeling drained, and struggling to get clients in the door. It keeps you distracted from the actual things you need to do that DO bring clients into your business.
So, what are money-making activities?
They are the tasks that directly contribute to your income and the growth of your business. A good marketing strategy includes both long- and short-term money-making activities to help produce results faster.
Is some busy work necessary to your business?
Absolutely. But most of it isn't and just keeps you either feeling overwhelmed from trying to get everything done or happy that you're crossing things off your list. And you're left wondering why you haven't created a steady income - yet - because you're busy working on your business all the time.
If you don't have a steady flow of leads and clients, then 95% of your focus needs to be on money-making activities. The other 5% on the necessary busy work.
Now let's look at some examples of busy work and money-making activities. The list below is just some examples, there are many more of both.
Examples of busy work and money-making activities
| Busy Work | Money-Making Activities |
|---|---|
| Updating or building a website | Creating and posting content for your audience |
| Posting value content without a plan, purpose, or CTAs | Sales posts and CTAs |
| Waiting for people to ask you about your offers because you're afraid of being salesy | Consistently engaging and connecting with your ICA |
| Waiting for people to engage with you (thinking it's pushy or aggressive) | Inviting people to sales calls |
| Waiting for people to connect with you | Doing sales calls |
| Creating a new lead magnet when you've already got several | Following up |
| Using creation as a form of procrastination | Creating a strategy that promotes your offers and fulfills your goal |
| Learning - yep education is often busy work you use to delay doing the thing | Hosting free or low-cost events that end with sales pitches for your high end offers |
| Cleaning out your inbox | Sending DMs to warm leads |
| Cleaning out your connections lists of people who are no longer your ICA | Talking about your offer/business to anyone and everyone who will listen |
| Organizing old content | Business type or mindset coaching/mentoring that helps you sell your offer |
| Coffee/Networking chats | Sending marketing emails to your list |
| Waiting until you a sales page to sell the offer (or continuing to tweak it rather than putting it out) | Sending out invoices |
Real example of busy work sabotaging money-making activities
This example comes from a service provider on Facebook. She was agonizing over her logo and branding, worried she wasn't picking the right colors when she hadn't even put together an offer or figured out who her ideal client was yet. As a result, she wasn't putting out a single bit of marketing that would bring in money because she was stuck on a busy work detail.
My advice to her?
'Put together an offer and get out there and sell it. You can create the branding later when you're making money and clear on what you're doing.'
So, why was she stuck on this detail (and not going to take my advice). Because she believed the popular thinking that you need a logo, branding, and website to have a business (which is complete BS and just keeps you from making money longer). You can make money (and lots of it) WITHOUT having a single one of these things. Put them on the nice to have list that you will get to when you have the money and extensive knowledge of your business (plus, can afford to pay someone to create them for you).
How do you determine what is busy work and what is a money-making activity?
One of the easiest ways to determine whether what you're doing is busy work or a money-making activity is to ask yourself a series of questions. If the answer to these questions is 'NO' then it's busy work. If the answer is 'YES' then do it.
Do I need this to sell my offer?
Does this help make me more visible to my ideal clients?
If I don't do this activity today, will it stop me from making money?
Is this helping me to connect and build relationships with my ideal clients?
Does this move my ideal client along the customer's journey and closer to making a buying decision?
At the end of the day, creating an offer, marketing, and closing the sale is what makes you money. Tweaking your sales page, rather than putting it out because it's not perfect yet, isn't. Nothing you do will ever be perfect and you can always find things wrong with your content, sales pages, website, even your offer.
Learn to hit the publish button faster, be messy (dumping perfectionism), and willing to fail or try things faster (failure is just a lesson, not a conclusion, unless you stop after failing).
When you do, you see results faster and easier. Learn as you go rather than trying to know everything first. Action is what builds confidence and gets results. Building a business is constant growth and change. Each level giving you new challenges and brain monkey chatter.
Dealing with the brain monkeys (your mindset) around money-making activities
How often have you not hit publish on a piece of content because you need to edit it one more time or you're afraid people will think you're (salesy, pushy, posting too often, not an expert, insert your excuse here)?
This is simply the brain monkeys (your mindset) getting in the way of you doing money-making activities. What triggers them most often is some sort of fear or block like imposter syndrome or worry of what others think.
Another example is avoiding, procrastinating, or substituting busy work with money-making activities in your business simply because they make you uncomfortable. Activities like putting out sales posts, CTAs asking for the sale, sending DMs to warm leads, or following up with people who have already asked for more information from you.
Learn to take action despite fear because action breeds confidence. Yep, that's right, confidence rarely comes before action because experience and knowledge is why you have confidence. You KNOW you can do the thing.
Using action and mindset to handle the brain monkeys
So, rather than be ruled by your fears and worries, train your mindset and beliefs by taking action anyway. It'll feel weird (and scary) at first, but like with anything, you get used to it. That way you're not cheating yourself or your clients because you didn't get your offers out there.
Your clients need YOU. They need your experience and solution to help them transform their problem into nothing to worry about. And if you're not putting yourself out there for them to find you, then they are settling on someone else (who still is a great person, but not the right one for your clients).
You need their money to accomplish whatever your bigger goal is, like putting your kids through private school, taking month long holidays, hiring a team (to do the necessary busy work). It's a win-win for both parties when you show up with the solution to help them, and they pay you. A win-win is when both parties achieve their goal.
Once you shift your mindset that money-making activities aren't icky (or need to be perfect before you put them out), it becomes easy to show up and sell your offers. Money is the byproduct of helping people. A sales conversation is simply guiding people to make the right decisions for themselves (even if they don't buy from you).
So, let go of the guilt, shame, fear, or whatever is coming up for you about selling and start doing those money-making activities.
Action Step: Creating a plan to stop wasting time on busy work so that you can focus on money-making activities.
It's easy to get into the habit of doing busy work and feeling like you've accomplished something. So, how do you get out of this habit and switch to one that focuses more on money-making activities?
You don't know what you don't know. It's impossible to know how much of your day is filled with busy work or money-making activities - until you track what you're doing. You might think you know, but I can promise you truly aren't aware of everything you're doing.
So, start by tracking all the activities you do in a day. You can use a spreadsheet, notebook, notes on your phone, whatever it takes to give you a clear snapshot of your daily activities. And I do mean track EVERYTHING - even personal action. I recommend doing this for at least a week, a month is better (you can start making changes immediately).
Because it's hard to figure out the problem if you don't realize what you're doing. Things like:
- Checking your email multiple times per day
- 15 to 20 minutes spent mindlessly scrolling several times a day
- Only engaging with your friends and supportive peers
- Creating months of content ahead
- 1-2-1 networking or coffee chats.
Once you've identified the busy work, it's time to switch your focus to money-making tasks.
Here's your money-making action plan so that you stop wasting time on busy work:
- It all starts with your goal. What do you need to do to make your goal happen?
- Now reverse engineer that into your marketing strategy, adding the tasks that will make it happen.
- Automate, delegate, or eliminate any tasks that don't directly contribute to your income.
- Block out your calendar with the money-making activities.
- Follow through, sticking to your schedule so that you focus on the most important tasks, and not bogged down in busy work.
- Continue tracking your daily activities so that you know you are making progress.
- Keep an eye on your analytics and data to measure the effectiveness of your efforts.
- Tweak as necessary until you're on the path to achieving your goal.
Don't beat yourself up if you slip back into your old habits. Instead, notice it's happened, and then jump back in where you stopped, continuing to move forward. Guilt and shame just halt progress.
Finally, get help. Whether you have a friend, peer, or relative who can help hold you accountable and on track. Or need to hire a coach or mentor. Getting help is one of the fastest ways to success. Trying to figure it out and do it yourself just keeps you trapped in the cycle of busy work.
If you are a time crunched service provider or coach who wants to dump the busy work and connect with more high-ticket clients while having fun using a personalized, flexible, marketing strategy and focused online community in 35 hours a week or less (including client work), join my free marketing group - The Client Connection - for support, tips, and guidance on growing an online business that does all these things.
